Establishing and maintaining production

"Quantity has a quality all its own" —attributed to Joseph Stalin

The T-34 posed new challenges for Soviet industry. It was the most heavily armoured medium tank produced to that point, and subassemblies originated at several plants: Kharkov Diesel Factory No. 75 supplied the model V-2 engine, Leningrad Kirovsky Factory (former Putilov works) made the original L-11 gun, and the Dinamo Factory in Moscow produced electrical components. Tanks were initially built at KhPZ No. 183, in early 1941 at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory (STZ), and starting in July shortly after the German invasion at Krasnoye Sormovo Factory No. 112 in Gorky. There were problems with defective armour plates, however. Due to a shortage of new V-2 diesel engines, the initial production run from the Gorky factory were equipped with the BT tank's MT-17 gasoline-burning aircraft engine, and inferior transmission and clutch. Only company commanders' tanks could be fitted with radios; such radios were expensive and in short supply. The L-11 gun did not live up to expectations, so the Grabin design bureau at Gorky Factory No. 92 designed a superior F-34 76.2 mm gun. Nobureaucrat would approve production, so Gorky and KhPZ started producing the gun anyway; official permission only came from Stalin's State Defence Committee after troops in the field sent back praise for the gun's performance.

There was political pressure from conservative elements in the army to redirect resources into building the older T-26 and BT tanks, or to cancel T-34 production pending completion of the more advanced T-34M design. This political pressure was brought to bear by the developer of the KV-1 and IS-2 tanks which were in competition with the T-34. Political pressure between designers and factories producing different tanks to meet the same requirements continued much later post war, including a period when the T-55, T-64 and T-72 were all in production at different factories with differing political patrons on the supreme council of the USSR. Germany's surprise attack against the Soviet Union in June 22, 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) forced the Soviet Union to freeze further development, and shift into full production of tanks.

Germany's fast advances forced the monumental evacuation of tank factories to the Ural mountains. KhPZ was re-established around the Dzherzhinski Ural Railcar Factory in Nizhny Tagil, renamed Stalin Ural Tank Factory No. 183. The Kirovsky Factory was evacuated just weeks before Leningrad was surrounded, and moved with the Kharkov Diesel Factory to the Stalin Tractor Factory in Chelyabinsk, soon to be nicknamed Tankograd ('Tank City'). Voroshilov Tank Factory No. 174 from Leningrad was incorporated into the Ural Factory and the new Omsk Factory No. 174. The Ordzhonikidze Ural Heavy Machine Tool Works(UZTM) in Sverdlovsk absorbed several small factories. While these factories were relocating at record speed, the industrial complex surrounding the Stalingrad Tractor Factory produced forty percent of all T-34s. As the factory became surrounded by heavy fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad, the situation there grew desperate: manufacturing innovations were necessitated by material shortages, and stories persist that unpainted T-34 tanks were driven out of the factory into the battlefields around it. Stalingrad kept up production until September 1942.

Barring this interruption, the only changes allowed on the production lines were to make the tanks simpler and cheaper to produce. New methods were developed for automated welding and hardening the plate, including innovations by Prof. Evgeny Paton. The design of the 76.2 mm F-34 gun Model 1941 was reduced to 614 parts, compared to the earlier model's 861. Over two years, the production cost of the tank was reduced from 269,500 rubles in 1941, to 193,000, and then to 135,000. Production time was cut in half by the end of 1942, even though most experienced factory workers had been sent to the field and replaced by a workforce consisting of 50% women, 15% boys, and 15% invalids and old men. At the same time T-34s, which had been "beautifully crafted machines with excellent exterior finish comparable or superior to those in Western Europe or America", were much more roughly finished, although mechanical reliability was not compromised.